The American Spectator

So, Obama’s Friday-before-Labor-Day news-dump was a politically panicked, long overdue if temporary walkback of a proposed $1 trillion dollar rule out of EPA — just one of a suite of assaults on jobs known collectively, colloquially as the ‘train wreck”.

I see Jim Tankersley’s tweet letting us in on the White House’s effort to spin the obvious about Obama dropping his purely discretionary, gratuitous gift to the anti-energy green lobby until 2013 — when the statute requires a review — as not really being an admission that their theory of costly rules create jobs is bunkum:

Obama: ozone rule due in ‘13: “I did not support asking state & local govs to begin implementing a new standard that will soon be reconsdrd”

OK. So. It just now occurred to EPA that this was their timeline?

Oh, well, no, in fact EPA recognized and defended all along proceeding gratuitously despite this same timeline.

But, given what this spin at least inadvertently admits in an attempt to avoid admitting even more, let’s look at the cost of this mismanaged effort, of his having imposed just the sort of wasteful bureaucratic redundancy which he says here is costly and not helpful to good governance (don’t want to put words in his mouth but isn’t that the implication of avoiding more, going forward?)

What has it cost us all, this past 20 months of EPA wasting taxpayer money because they looked at the calendar but apparently didn’t really look at the calendar? Also requiring the productive sector of the economy to spend huge sums responding and delay investment decisions, maybe even move elsewhere?

I’d be interested in estimated costs to the taxpayer, and to industry, to the economy of the now effectively acknowledged political bumble by the Obama administration which commenced as a sop to their anti-energy ‘green’ base in January 2010. 20 months of this wasteful indirect tax on the economy.

20 months of bureaucratic process and of the need to hire lawyers to address it. Bad, hyperpartisan government is costly. Even when it’s not inept. What did this stunt cost?